The Bone Palace

PART II  Nocturne

CHAPTER 8

On the seventeenth of Hekate, seven days after the party, a carriage left Erisín through the Aquilon Gate, on the north road to Arachne. The coach bore no colors or devices, but everyone in the palace knew it carried Savedra Severos and was bound for her family estate. Four Severoi guards rode beside it—all the archa would lend her—and an octad of hastily hired mercenaries. Excessive, some said, but everyone also knew that banditry in the countryside increased with every wave of Rosian refugees driven south.
Rumors and speculation chased each other through the court: Savedra had quarreled with the prince; she had quarreled with the princess; her famous loyalty couldn’t withstand an assassin’s gun pointed at her own head. Ginevra Jsutien displayed her wounded cheek with brave fragility, and was cosseted and made much of by her peers. She spoke no word against Savedra, but her silences were eloquent.
The prince saw Savedra off, though their farewells were stilted. Of the princess there was no sign; she had taken ill the day before. Maids had heard her fighting with Nikos, and rumors of another pregnancy or the unlikelihood thereof circulated with knowing glances and shaken heads.
The carriage kept a leisurely pace till the city walls shrank behind it, then the driver urged the six Medvener Bays into a gallop. The countryside rolled by, coastal scrublands giving way to brush, and the wooded hills drawing ever closer. The wind from the north was heavy with the tang of pine and graveyard cypress and the distant bite of snow.
Inside the cushioned cab, Savedra brooded. She ought to be pleased her plan had worked so well, or at least happy to see her childhood home again. Glad of a respite from court and politics. And she was, but still her thoughts spiraled down to frets and worries with every idle moment.
“Your face will set that way if you don’t stop frowning. And you’ll wear a hole in your skirt.”
Savedra blinked and dragged her hands away from the hem she’d been picking. Ashlin lounged on the opposite side of the carriage, one booted foot drawn up on the bench. Every so often she tugged the window open, slitting her eyes against the cold wind. It had taken some argument to convince her to ride in the carriage instead of remaining with the outriders after they left the city walls, but even in confinement her mood had improved since they left the palace. Savedra had seen her smile more in the past several hours than in two months in Erisín.
The princess wore mercenary armor in patchwork black and brown, and her hair had been trimmed to a rougher shape than her usual sleek bob and dyed a dark nut-brown. The color wouldn’t fool anyone who saw her pale eyelashes, but it made her green eyes all the more striking. She’d even pierced her ears again and hung them with gold and silver hoops, the wealth of a successful sellsword. It didn’t look like a disguise—more like a disguise had been stripped away to show the truth. Ashlin would never have agreed to leave the palace for her own safety, but the ruse had caught her interest, as had a trip to the library at Evharis. It wasn’t an invitation an Alexios was likely to receive.
“If you mean to keep me penned in this rattling box, you could at least offer more conversation than my horse.” Metal flashed with her smile; a silver stud kept the hole in her nostril open in the absence of her wedding jewelry.
“Sorry.” Savedra’s own smile was wry and lopsided. “You might be better off with the horse.”
“My guards used to say that the only useful thing a horse couldn’t do is dice. I don’t suppose you have any of those on you?”
“I’m afraid not. And the bouncing wouldn’t help.” The ride was actually quite smooth—the coach was well sprung and the roads maintained, but the constant soft rattle made her spine ache; her ears ached from the clatter of hooves and wheels. She’d never cared for riding especially, but the sight of nothing but the dim wood-and-upholstery interior of the cab might be enough to drive her ahorse after another day. “I imagine there’s a deck of cards here somewhere, though.”
After a bit of searching she found one in a door pocket, along with a charcoal nub and scraps of paper smeared with old scores—the coach’s last occupants had taken their tarock games seriously. The cards were worn soft at the edges, faces faded. They whispered as Savedra shuffled, a muted hiss instead of the sharp slap and crack of crisp stock. Teaching her to play for money was one of the myriad ways Varis had corrupted her as a child.
Thinking of her uncle nearly made her frown again, though she kept her face smooth this time. A visit to Evharis was only half an excuse to keep Ashlin out of harm’s way; Savedra and the princess had both been with Nikos when Isyllt Iskaldur came to the palace, shaken and bruised and grey as paste, to report that Lychandra’s jewelry had been recovered and the thieves dealt with. Nikos had been pleased with the timely handling of the situation, but it was clear that Isyllt was still troubled.
The idea of blood-drinking demons creeping through tombs was troubling indeed, and Savedra still wondered what knowledge of them Varis was hiding. After a quiet inquiry around Phoenix House, she’d learned that he’d been distracted lately, underslept and much more subdued than usual. It might be nothing but one of his countless affairs, but the confluence of events sent unease worming through her gut. Between family intrigues and machinations at court, she had learned to trust that sensation.
She concentrated on the blur of cards, and wondered if she could read the future from them the way some fortunetellers claimed to.
Ashlin pushed the curtain aside and tugged the window open. The cold draft pricked gooseflesh on Savedra’s limbs, and cut through the scent of oiled mail and leather and warm flesh that she hardly noticed anymore. She caught a glimpse of low grey sky and hills dark with winter-brown oaks; soon the road would rise into the pine and juniper forests that skirted the mountains. When the carriage was unpleasantly cold the princess shut the window again and leaned back against her seat, blowing her tousled fringe out of her eyes.
“Should I leave my hair this way?” she asked, brushing at the dye-dulled strands.
“No,” Savedra answered immediately, lifting the latch that held the narrow plank table to the wall. Hinges creaked as it lowered. “It’s hideous. You have beautiful hair. What you ought to do is grow it out.”
“All it does is tangle and get in my eyes.”
Savedra lifted a hand to her own wild hair, bound up for travel and still frizzing free of its pins. “I have no sympathy. Anyway, you have maids to style it for you.”
Ashlin frowned. “No one’s brushed my hair for me since my mother died.”
“Let Nikos do it—he spent long enough learning to brush mine.”
The princess’s frown twisted sideways. “Probably not. I might let you, though. I trust you around me with knives, after all, so why not combs?”
“Combs don’t attract attention,” Savedra said automatically, slapping cards onto the table, “and are just as easy to poison.” One of the first attempts on her life had been a gift of poisoned combs. She was careful now to buy her own, and never from the same shop.
Ashlin’s eyebrows climbed. “Is it safe to be trapped in a carriage with you?”
“Probably not. It’s a good thing you have a sword.” She collected her hand and winked over the cards. “Your move, Your Highness.”
They stopped that night at a crossroads inn to eat and change horses and catch a few hours of sleep, rising before dawn to continue. The lieutenant Cahal took Ashlin’s place in the carriage the next day, a dark-haired Celanoran who had come to Erisín with the betrothal party three years ago. Half the ostensible mercenaries riding with the coach were the princess’s own guard, and the other half Captain Denaris’s handpicked soldiers. The lieutenant was hawk-eyed and quiet, and a cutthroat tarock player. Savedra might have to pawn her pearls soon.
“Am I being careless with her?” Savedra asked while Cahal shuffled. She’d tried to keep her worries to herself, but the soldier’s calm and obvious loyalty invited confidences.
Cards blurred from hand to hand before he answered. “I’ve ridden with the princess since she was sixteen,” he said at last. “When she was younger, no one could have been more careless with her health than she was. That’s most of why she isn’t heir—too much like her mother.”
Savedra had asked once why Ashlin, the firstborn, wasn’t Crown Princess of Celanor; the princess had said only that a crown suited her younger brother better.
“Did you know the queen?”
He shook his head. “I was too young. She spent little time in the castle by the time I was training there. But I saw her sometimes—bright and fierce and beautiful. A wildling warrior of the old Clans. They call the castle at Yselin the Eyrie, but it was always a mew to her.” He gave a rueful shrug, a soldier speaking of things that weren’t his to know but everyone knew anyway. “She died in battle when Ashlin was thirteen. No king or queen or prince of Celanor had fallen so for generations, not since Dhonail and Siobhan, but Nemain wouldn’t leave the defense of her clanhame to her soldiers when brigands came raiding.” Another shrug. “Ashlin worshipped her, and by the time she was sixteen everyone thought she’d kill herself the same way.”
He grinned wryly, black eyes glinting. “Her Highness has mellowed a great deal since then. In some ways your palace intrigue is good for her—makes her think before she rushes blindly in.” He dealt a new hand. “So, no, I don’t think you’re being careless with her. Coddling only makes her angry, anyway.” This shrug was sympathetic and long-suffering.
They passed the road sign for Arachne as afternoon shadows stretched into evening on the third day. Every other time Savedra had made the trip it had been a leisurely journey of half a decad or more, but neither she nor Ashlin were in the mood for leisure now. The carriage veered off the main road onto the narrower path that led to the Severoi’s hillside estate. They were high in the hills now, near the crux of the Varagas and Sindrel mountain ranges, at the edge of the Sarken border. Miles to the west, the Herodis thundered down from the heights, surging black and icy toward Erisín and the sea.
The ride roughened as the road sloped, and by the time the horses clattered to a stop Savedra’s teeth ached from clenching her jaw and sharp pains pierced through her shoulders and back. She swore like a dockhand as Cahal handed her down, and was rewarded by the amused crease of his eyes. Her left leg had fallen asleep, and stung with pins and needles as she dragged it across the cobbles.
She raised a hand against the sun, and forgot her aches and complaints as her eyes adjusted. The sun slanted across the western mountains, gilding the sharp peaks of the Varagas and blinding the windows of the house. Shadows gathered thick in the lower forests. The air tasted of pine and woodsmoke and dead leaves, and Savedra breathed deep with a sigh. She’d played in these woods with her brothers and the household children, and sulked in them during the miseries of her adolescence. Phoenix House and the Gallery of Pearls might be more a home to her these days, but Evharis would always carry a weight of memories.
Ashlin dismounted, stroking her sweating horse and drawing aside her scarf to bare wind-flushed cheeks. She shaded her eyes as she studied the hills and terraced orchards, and the wilder trees beyond. “I’ve missed the forests,” she said quietly.
Stablehands appeared, hesitating at the sight of mercenaries. Before Savedra could identify herself the great doors swung open and the familiar gaunt form of the house steward descended the steps. Savedra smiled and stepped forward, trying in vain to shake the wrinkles from her heavy skirts. As a child she would have run to him, but dignity and her still stiff leg kept her from it now.
Iancu Sala blinked when he saw her, surprise foreign on his creased aquiline face. “Vedra!” He hurried to embrace her, stooping to do so. “I had no word you were coming. Is everything well?”
“I’m fine, Iancu. It’s—It’s complicated.” She smiled wryly.
“Ah.” He brightened, straightening his immaculate jacket. Any Severoi vassal was well versed in complications. He gestured the stablehands forward, and sent another servant to prepare rooms and extra portions for dinner. Cahal led the other riders toward the stable, while Ashlin fell in beside Savedra. If Iancu thought a mercenary out of place in the family house, he gave no sign.
“How is the archa, and your father?” Iancu asked as he took their cloaks. He poured an ewer of lavender-scented water into a basin by the door and let them wash the dust and sweat from their faces. The hall always smelled of lavender and wood polish and wax.
“They’re well. They would send greetings, if they weren’t pretending to ignore this trip.” They followed him into a parlor, where Savedra sank into a chair and nearly moaned with pleasure at a seat that didn’t move. Ashlin paced behind her, maneuvering her sword carefully around the furniture.
Iancu’s heavy brows arched, but he only moved to the sideboard to pour plum brandy.
“Sit down,” Savedra told Ashlin. “My feet ache just watching you.”
“You need to stretch too, or you’ll regret it in the morning.” In compromise, she leaned against the arm of a couch, angling her sword aside.
“Excuse my manners,” Savedra said, accepting a glass from Iancu. “Iancu Sala, steward of Evharis, this is—”
A heartbeat’s pause while she scrambled for a suitable name, but Ashlin filled it by standing and bowing gracefully. “Sorcha Donelan, King’s Talon and Captain of the Royal Guard.” Her lilting accent, faded after years in Erisín, came to the fore. “At your service and that of your house.”
Iancu’s eyebrows climbed higher, but he returned the bow with all due dignity. “The hospitality of Evharis is yours, Captain. You’re a long way from home.”
“Farther every day, it seems. But it’s my honor to escort the Lady Savedra wherever she goes.”
Savedra realized she was gaping, and took a gulp of brandy to cover it. Liquor seared her throat and sinuses and brought tears to her eyes. Ashlin sipped her own drink, lips twitching with amusement.
Iancu’s dark eyes flickered as he studied them both, but it took more than aliases and disguises to dent his discretion. “Dinner will be late, I’m afraid. Many of the staff are helping with the pomegranate harvest, and we didn’t expect guests.”
“That’s all right,” Savedra said, even as the brandy lined her empty stomach with heat. “We came to use the library. May we?” Asking permission was merely a courtesy, but Nadesda had trained her in politeness as well as poisons.
“Of course,” Iancu replied in kind, collecting their empty glasses and returning them to the tray.
He led them through the back of the house, pointing out useful rooms and stairs to Ashlin as they passed. It wasn’t the grand tour, but still meant to impress—the route took them through the great family room, lined with paintings and statues and costly heirlooms. Ashlin made appropriately admiring noises. The rear doors opened onto the columned porch and into the gardens. The space behind the house had been carved out of the hillside, and above the high walls a dark slope of trees brooded. It unnerved some of her cousins, but Savedra had always found the forest’s weight reassuring.
Beyond the garden’s lavender-lined paths and trellised arches rose the library, imported red sandstone glowing incarnadine in the dying light. High windows shone amid the intricate redents. The main house was arched and columned and sprawling in classical Selafa?n tradition, but the library had been built years later as a wedding gift by an archon for his southern bride, crowned with ogival lotus-shaped towers in the ancient Sindha?n style.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” Iancu said as they climbed the broad red steps. “No one has visited the library in months, since Lord Varis and his friend were here. Your generation has no sense of history.”
An old jibe, long become a joke, but Savedra didn’t rise to it this time. “When was Uncle Varis here?” she asked instead, trying to keep the sharp interest from her voice.
“Four months ago, it must have been. At the end of Janus. He came without warning as well—clearly he has been a bad influence on you after all.”
“And which friend did he bring?” She used the same carefully bland inflection he had.
“I don’t know.” He paused at the top of the steps to sort through his keys, and the playfulness drained slowly from his voice. “She was hooded and cloaked the whole time, and offered no name. We’re all used to Lord Varis’s assignations, of course, but this one… I didn’t like her. She was a witch, I think. Not one of your Arcanost scholars, but a proper vrajitora. I even thought I heard a bit of the eastern mountains in her voice.”
Iancu’s parents had crossed the mountains from Sarkany decades ago, and not survived long after settling in Arachne. Their orphaned son had eventually been adopted by a housekeeper at Evharis and risen high in the family’s confidences, but the wild lands east of the Varagas were in his blood. He’d kept Savedra up at night with stories of hungry wolves and bloodthirsty spirits and great smoldering wyrms who laired in the mountains by the Zaratan Sea. But there was no hint of exaggeration in his tone now.
Savedra’s stomach chilled. “Do you remember what they looked at? I need to see it.”
Iancu frowned as the brassbound door swung open. “I do. But you put me in an awkward position, milady. Lord Varis didn’t swear me to secrecy, but no member of this family should ever have to. Gossip is one thing, but it isn’t my place to betray a confidence, intentional or otherwise.”
Savedra pressed her tongue between her teeth, biting back a hasty reply. Only her mother might blithely order Iancu in matters such as this. Even if Ashlin revealed herself, the word of an Alexios, princess or not, meant nothing to the steward of Evharis. There were already Severoi who thought Savedra a traitor to the House, though Nadesda’s approbation kept their tongues in check.
The last rind of sun slipped behind the mountains, and the light cooled and greyed. Somewhere in the garden a cricket began a slow droning chirp.
“Forgive me,” Iancu said, holding the door for them. “It’s not my place to keep guests standing on the front step, either.”
They moved past him into the cool gloom of the library. Light from the high windows cast diffuse streaks across the polished tiles. The steward took a match from a table by the door and struck it—not to ignite a lamp, but a spell. The flame died quickly, but light kindled in a glass globe set on the wall, then in another, spiraling upward one by one until their pale gold glow filled the tower. An extravagant sort of magic, and one that required renewing every month, but it meant that no candle or oil lamp ever endangered the library’s collection.
Savedra was familiar with the royal palace’s library, and had seen the one in the Arcanost, and knew that both collections dwarfed this one. But the sight of the shelves lining the walls never failed to impress her. A wide marble stair spiraled around the room, its landings positioned under the windows where tables and chairs might catch the best light. Pointed arches led to the smaller domes that budded from the sides of the tower—the bindery, secure vaults, and the librarian’s rooms. The last librarian had retired over a year ago, half-blind and rheumatic, and the family had yet to appoint another. Iancu had taken up the duties, as he did with any left lying unfulfilled.
Savedra turned back to Iancu, who lingered by the door, obviously preparing to excuse himself. “Can you tell me this, at least? Varis was researching the vrykoloi, wasn’t he? Demons and blood magic and their history in Erisín? The sorts of thing an eastern witch might be interested in.”
The last was a blind strike, hastily cobbled together from Iancu’s old bedtime stories; she didn’t expect it to hit home. But he flinched, left hand rising in a warding gesture before he clenched it at his side again.
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” he said. “And you should be careful what you speak aloud, especially so near the mountains. But if you wish to research such things, the index is all you need.” He bowed shallowly. “If you’ll excuse me, I must see to your men, and to dinner. It should be ready within the hour.” He hesitated for a heartbeat as he turned, then squared his shoulders and stepped into the gathering dusk. The door echoed shut behind him.
The books were missing.
Savedra and Ashlin searched for an hour before they were certain of it—not misshelved, or set aside, but gone from the building. Demonologies, treatises on blood magic, certain family histories, and those were only the most obvious. Checking the entire catalog was a task for more than two people and one evening.
Iancu returned just after the hour to call them to dinner, but when Savedra explained the problem he immediately joined the search. Books were not removed from the library, not even by archons, and none had been stolen in living memory. Another hour passed, revealing at least two more missing volumes, and night had settled thick and heavy against the windows. Finally Iancu collapsed in a chair, slumping with a despair Savedra had never seen in him before.
“I can’t believe it,” he muttered against his hands. “Not of Lord Varis.”
Savedra could hardly believe it herself. Varis respected little, certainly, but of the things he did, she would have ranked knowledge and her mother among the very highest.
“I understand this is an unpleasant situation,” Savedra said, kneeling beside him, “and I have no desire to make it worse. But please, will you tell me everything you know about Varis’s visit? It’s important.”
He gave her a wan smile and brushed her hair lightly as he had when she was a child. “I shouldn’t, but I will. After dinner, though, or the cooks will be even more annoyed with us.”
Dinner was duck in pomegranate sauce with tabouli, delicious even cold, but they ate in frowning silence. Even a good bottle of Ombrian siyah did nothing to lighten the mood, though Savedra was enamored enough of the vintage that she took another bottle with them when they retired to Iancu’s private study.
“I’m afraid there isn’t much I can tell you,” the steward said, after activating the room’s silence. “Lord Varis came, as I said, in Janus. He was quieter than usual, perhaps, more withdrawn. I thought that had to do with his companion, since she took such care to hide her face.”
“Do you have any idea who she was?”
“None, though of course everyone speculated. Some thought she was just a melodramatic actress, while others decided she must be a member of a great house, one who couldn’t be seen associating with a Severos. The kitchen staff had a wager going as to whose wife she might be.”
“Did you speak with her?”
“Hardly at all. She was never rude, but she rarely spoke, and even more rarely to anyone but Varis. He was… solicitous of her privacy.”
“But you didn’t like her.”
“No.” He shook his head, pinching the long arch of his nose. “I knew it was foolish even then, but something about her made me uneasy. You think me superstitious, and perhaps that’s so, but between her accent and the nature of her studies I thought her a witch from the mountains. Not all magic is as civilized as it is in Erisín.”
“And you never heard a name?”
Iancu pinched his nose again, as if against a headache. “He called her my lady, and darling, but he calls the gardeners darling, so that hardly signifies. And once…” The lines on his brow deepened in thought, and Savedra was disconcerted by how old it made him look. He ought to be as timeless as the house. “I thought I heard him call her Phaedra once, or say the name. She didn’t respond to it, though, so I wasn’t certain. And it’s hardly an eastern name. I suppose I didn’t expect it to be hers.”
It was Savedra’s turn to frown, turning her wine glass between her palms and searching for answers in the dark ripple. “I’ve heard that name recently.” It was a perfectly normal Selafa?n name, though not one that had been in fashion lately, so where… “Phaedra Severos. She wrote an essay on blood magic. I saw it mentioned in the Phoenix Codex.”
“I don’t know of any Phaedra Severos,” Iancu said. From the steward of Evharis, it was practically a denial of her existence. “When was this essay published?”
She shrugged. “Four sixty something. Before I was born.”
“No sense of history,” he muttered with a fleeting smile. He set aside his glass and rose, unfolding long limbs from his chair. He removed a copy of the Codex from his great oaken desk and handed it to Savedra. “Where did you see the reference?”
After several moments of flipping and squinting and muttering imprecations, she finally found the footnote she remembered. “ ‘On The Transfer of Magic and Consciousness via the Sanguine Humor,’ by Phaedra Severos. Published by the Arcanost in 463.”
Iancu frowned and took the book from her. “How odd. I’ve never heard of this woman.”
“Neither have I,” Savedra said, “but I don’t know all my cousins. Perhaps she died.”
“Death is no reason not to exist,” he said. “Certainly not to Evharis.”
“She might have married in, or out.” Which was still no excuse, as Iancu’s glower told her. “There must be records.”
“Unless those are missing too.”
*   *   *
And so of course they were.
The library’s great clepsydra dripped past midnight before Iancu finally located an intact record—the book had been taken to the bindery to be restitched, and that may have saved it. Phaedra Severos was the daughter of Ilisavet and Leonidas Severos, born in Medea in 441. Which meant that her family was a distant and apolitical branch of the Severoi and it was no wonder Savedra had never heard of them, and also that Phaedra had probably been a very talented mage to be publishing articles for the Arcanost at twenty-two. In 464 she married a minor Sarken margrave named Ferenz Darvulesti. Beyond that, she didn’t appear to exist.
Could she have been here four months ago, helping Varis steal books? If that were the case, she appeared to have stolen all traces of herself.